Close Relations (35 page)

“What is it?” Jerry demanded as I stuck my head into his office. He was sitting with his feet on the desk, talking to one of the kids who was doing negative research on Parker. His upstate tan was still glowing but his hair was mussed, as if he had been running his fingers through it all day.

With a very dry mouth I asked, “What time do you think you’ll be getting to me?”

“What? I don’t have to speak with you.” He spoke to his fingernails, not to me.

“I see. All right.”

“I’ll be working late,” he said.

“Maybe I’ll call my mother. Invite her to the city.”

“Fine.”

“Or maybe I’ll go out to Queens.”

“Okay. Look, I’m busy right now, Marcia.” The aide, a Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn, about nineteen or twenty years old, was trying to act disinterested, but his eyes kept darting from Jerry to me.

“If we go to a movie, I may sleep over at her apartment.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow then.”

I wanted to shout, What’s happening here? A relationship like ours just doesn’t fade out. This isn’t natural. We should fight and curse. Crockery should be thrown, faces slapped. Hearts should break. And then we should make up.

“You keep getting prettier,” David said, two hours later. We sat at a small round table with a long pink tablecloth in a large and elegant dining room of a very grand hotel. His fingers ran over the top of my hand lightly. “That black is such a beautiful contrast with your skin and hair.”

David’s airy touch erased a day of Jerry. I stared at his big hands, his thick fingers, and was suddenly so overcome by lust for him that I was certain the orchestra could feel the vibrations of my need across the room. I didn’t want dinner. I didn’t want to waltz. I only wanted to climb onto David’s lap like the night before, to rub against him until I felt him rising into me.

“What are you drinking tonight?” he asked. “White wine?” I nodded. He raised one hand and a waiter appeared. A few moments later he leaned forward and asked, “Marcia, is anything wrong? You’re so quiet.”

I made myself look at him. His face was simply the face of David C. Hoffman. Large-featured and pleasant with nice hazel eyes. His mouth was open slightly, and I wondered, If I put my tongue between his teeth, would he bite down on it, hard, the way he had done the night before? But he smiled pleasantly, as if what had gone on in his bedroom had happened in another world to other people. This world was one of violins and silver candelabra. He had admired my dress. I wanted him naked.

“Marcia?”

“Did you have a haircut?” I asked.

“Yes. Why? Don’t you like it? Is it too short?”

“No. No, it’s fine. You just looked a little different, and I couldn’t figure out why for a minute.”

“I caught myself in the mirror this morning and realized I looked too scruffy for you. So I had it trimmed. You’re sure it’s okay?”

“It’s fine, David. You look very nice.”

We drank wine and listened to the orchestra warm up with Cole Porter. We ordered dinner. We danced to Rodgers and Hart. David, of course, danced elegantly, taking me along with him, holding me close enough to guide me but not close enough. Once, when I glanced up and saw my hand completely enclosed in his, I experienced another flush of arousal and started to trip, but he whirled me out of it, around the floor, back to the table.

We ate, but I forget what. We discussed in which musical direction George Gershwin would have gone if he had lived. David told me I had porcelain skin. I thanked him.

“More wine?” he asked. I shook my head.

He told me about his children. He said the worst part of the whole divorce had not been losing Lynn; it had been the first few months when he had come home from work to a silent apartment.

He asked, “Have you ever thought about having children?”

Within three minutes my eyes filled with tears as I told him about my miscarriage. Then I mused, “I’m afraid they’d interfere with my career, or at least cause complications. And I’m afraid that I might wind up like my mother, having a child and then not knowing what to do with it, fearing it because it brings responsibilities I couldn’t manage, or loathing it. What would happen if I had a child who was as remote as my mother? Could I love it?”

“Do you really believe that could happen?”

“No, I guess not. But it’s safer for me, at this stage in my life, to think that way than to melt and go goo-goo every time I see a baby carriage pass by. Sometimes when I see a baby, I wonder whether—you know, when I was pregnant, if it was a boy or a girl….”

“Marcia.”

“No more, David. I can’t take it. Every time I talk to you I wind up crying.”

“And every time I talk to you I find myself saying things I’ve never said to anyone else. About my brother. How it was losing the children. I don’t want this to sound negative, but you bring out the worst in me. No, wait. That sounds terrible.”

“I bring out the honesty in you. And most of it’s fine and dandy, but some of it isn’t. And that’s the part you can’t acknowledge, so you engage in this cover-up, this barrage of politeness.”

“Well, perhaps. You may be right.” He glanced away from me, across the room to the orchestra, and began humming “Swinging on a Star” with them. “Want to dance again?” he asked.

“No.” He hummed another bar. Then I cut him off. “I want to talk with you, David.”

“I know what you’re going to say, that I’m embarrassed by opening up to you and that’s why I started humming.”

“No.”

“Well?” I said nothing. David signaled the waiter. “I’ll just have another cup of coffee while I wait. Would you like one?”

“You sent my mother a book,” I said.

“Yes.
The Seeds of Destruction,
about the Wagner administration. Have you read it? It’s very good, scholarly and readable. It was written by a friend of mine.”

“I don’t want a book report. You know what’s bothering me.”

“That I sent your mother a book?”

“Come on, David.”

“I see. You’re objecting because I’m acting as if the way to your heart is through your mother, and that’s a major error because you’re still rebelling against parental authority. Right?”

“I don’t find you amusing.”

“You’re being silly. She’s a lonely woman and I had a nice talk with her. I gather she’s not terribly well off and couldn’t go out and buy the book herself, so I sent it to her.”

“Didn’t you ever hear of public libraries?”

“Don’t be so mean. It’s not like you.”

“It is like me. Don’t you realize that if she thinks you’re even mildly interested in me she’ll start putting on all sorts of pressure? And my aunt and then Barbara. I just want to be alone with you. I don’t want my whole damn family along. And you went out of your way to encourage her—”

“Marcia, if you want to feud with your mother, that’s your concern. But I liked her. The book is between her and me, all right?”

“No. It’s not all right. It concerns me.” He turned his attention to his coffee. “You’re tuning me out. I’m bringing up something unpleasant so you’re making believe you can’t hear me.”

“What would you like, Marcia? To have a screaming fight about your mother right here?”

“I bet that’s what you really expect from me, isn’t it? Barbara’s low-class cousin who keeps forgetting her manners.”

David slapped his credit card down on the silver plate without checking the bill. “What I expect from you is the honesty you’re going on about. Honesty about yourself. Don’t manufacture crises, Marcia. Don’t try to work up a fight just to make sure we keep our distance.”

“But it’s all right for you to hum.”

“I admitted it. I apologize.”

“You behave like you cornered the goddamn etiquette market, do you know that? ‘Can I get you anything?’ That’s what you said. Don’t stare at me so blankly. Afterward. Last night. Like the whole thing was something casual and you were offering me an after-dinner mint.”

“Did I behave casually? Did I? As though it were the sort of ho-hum thing I go through every night with a different partner? Is that the impression you got?” I didn’t answer. “Is it?”

“No.”

“Then cut the shit, Marcia. And don’t stare at me. I know all the words you know. Don’t try to pigeonhole me, make me into some damned upper-class fop. I’m a human being, and believe me, my feelings go as deep as yours. I may not be as proficient at expressing myself as some of your friends are, but I’m trying.”

“David—”

“Just listen. If you think we’re going too fast, fine. Tell me. If something’s bothering you, let me know. But don’t pick unnecessary fights. I don’t want nonsense about books or dinner mints obfuscating—”

“Obfuscating?”

“Please let me finish.”

“I want to sleep at your apartment tonight.”

“Let’s go.”

“Don’t you want to finish?”

“We will.”

J
erry and Paterno stood in the corridor of headquarters rocking with laughter. Paterno punched Jerry’s arm in masculine fellowship and said, “You are one mean, conniving bastard.” They threw back their heads again and laughed. Then Paterno, still chortling, ambled back to his office.

“I see you two are friends again,” I said. I stood at the door to the ladies’ room. Jerry hadn’t seen me. “How nice.”

“We’re coming along.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“You wanted me to quit working for him, remember? He was such a no-good son-of-a-bitch that you swore you’d never have anything to do with him again, and you all but told me—”

“I expect you to have those two speeches on my desk by noon.”

That was our only confrontation. We hardly saw each other. Jerry’s romance of Paterno was so intense that it made it easy for me to cheat. The moment Lyle LoBello was out of sight, Jerry was in Paterno’s office, cajoling, charming, flattering. His success was increasingly evident; LoBello began to be dispatched to the same upstate cities that Jerry had been banished to.

My evenings were mine. After Jerry drove an exhausted Paterno home to Queens, he would evaporate. I sensed the stress of re-establishing his position was enormous, and he was temporarily regressing to an easier phase of his life—drinking and telling stories with the boys. Jerry would float into the apartment about two or three in the morning, gliding across the bedroom, sliding under the blanket with great finesse, taking pains not to touch me.

I usually returned to the apartment by midnight or one, but I could never drift right off to sleep. Part of me waited for Jerry, for a final scene. The other part was alert, stimulated by David, by glamorous evenings with his law partners and clients.

They were all so rich. They spent hundreds of dollars a week on theater tickets, concert tickets, ballet tickets. I had never before seen a play up close enough to watch the actors’ expressions. They spent thousands a month on clothes and food.

“David,” said Mrs. Millar, wife of the Mr. Millar who owned fifty-one percent of the company which owned fifty-two percent of Central America. “Marcia is such a find! She’s been telling me all about Queens. Fascinating! I can’t believe how abysmal my ignorance was.” Neither could I. “She’s so bright!” Mrs. Millar’s ruby and diamond earrings flamed in the candlelight. Mr. Millar smiled at me, his teeth black from caviar.

“That woman!” I said later.

“The worst. But he’s one of the firm’s biggest clients. You were very brave.”

“Can you believe she’s lived in this city all her life and never heard of the Board of Estimate?”

But most of them were like David: intelligent, kind, and cultured. Some were even fun. One of his partners’ wives was an associate professor of political science at City College, and we spent three hours at a dinner party in passionate conversation, ignoring the eight other guests and the host and hostess, hooting over each other’s tales of Capital Hill idiocies. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this,” she said at the end of the evening. She lowered her voice. “Especially after that bovine creature.”

I matched my tone to hers. “Who was that?”

“David’s ex-wife. Exquisitely boring human being. Could go on for hours about adverbial clauses in Lytton Strachey. It was like being beaten with brass knuckles.”

But most nights I spent alone with David, usually winding up at his apartment. Once, though, when Jerry accompanied Paterno on a three-day upstate swing, I asked David to Greenwich Village for dinner. I wanted to allay any suspicions he had about what he had called my “living arrangements.”

He finished a second helping of strawberry mousse. “Wonderful. And it’s such a nice apartment.”

“What did you expect? A slum?”

“Yes. Although I must say, for riffraff, you’re quite a good cook.”

David intimidated me. He was always correct. He never had to glance at anyone to see which fork to pick up. He always had read the book or seen the movie under discussion, and—though he was no intellectual exhibitionist like Barry—he would make an intelligent remark that would leave the company nodding at his perspicacity. Maître d’s fawned on him, doormen bowed, even taxi drivers were courteous.

“Do you have enough pillows?” he asked. We were lying on his bed, fully dressed, watching Katharine Hepburn enchant Spencer Tracy.

“Look at her,” I said. “Just at the way she holds her head. Perfection. It’s too depressing.”

He pushed a button on the remote-control switch and turned off the television. “Why do you feel so inadequate?”

“I don’t. Can I have Katharine Hepburn back?”

“You do.”

“What am I supposed to feel? Secure?”

“Why not? That first night I met you, at the debate, you had such presence. You just sat there with your eyes closed in the middle of all that chaos. Everyone else was wringing their hands, and you were completely self-possessed. If you’re comfortable in that kind of high-powered situation, I don’t see why you can’t be comfortable anywhere. But you’re always worrying about your dress or that you don’t have nail polish or something silly.”

“It’s not silly. If those women didn’t care about clothes they wouldn’t spend a fortune on them. And I keep wearing the same two dresses over and over.”